Having a home filled with clutter can be stressful to live in, but what about the worries we experience when our decluttering causes waste?
Oftentimes, a key motivator of living a minimalist lifestyle is to reduce our impact on the planet.
By stepping away from consumerism and mindfully only buying what we need, we are minimising the energy and resources used to manufacture the items we welcome into our lives. Plus, we create less waste by keeping, maintaining and appreciating those items.
However, to get to that point in our minimalism journey, many of us will have to rid ourselves of oodles of clutter. Which creates the opposite result: we are being wasteful.
And that warrants some worries.
I was brought up to never let anything go to waste – the food on our plates, the clothing in our wardrobes, the packaging that something was delivered in. It’s a great ethos that encourages using, reusing and recycling BUT it also made me hold on to things that I didn’t need for far too long.
That’s when I began questioning whether I was being intentional about keeping and reusing things, or if I was just using that as an excuse to hold on to items I didn’t really need.
There has been a meme going around for years now about the pinnacle of adulting being keeping hold of ‘a really good box‘ and that definitely touched a nerve with both myself and many thousands of people around the internet.
The trouble comes when you start keeping hold of everything ‘just in case’ = big box, little box, cardboard box. And much more. Anything outdated or damaged but that could be repaired or reused.
In many instances, these should be the easy things to rid ourselves of when we start our minimalist journey: not sentimental, not expensive, not aspirational. Goodbye clutter.
But then we take a look at that get-rid-of pile and start feeling guilty.
After all, we’ve just created a heap of waste when we want to be caring for the planet, not adding to landfill.
Ah. It’s not so easy to get rid of those items after all.
Because we can’t simply give them to someone else who could make use of them or donate them to a charity and feel good about it. And we can’t sell them to recoup the value of something that is essentially rubbish.
I’ve kept old jumpers with bobbles and holes for years and years. Not because I love them but because I don’t have any moral way of getting rid of them.
I know that charity shops won’t be able to resell them in such poor condition. And who would buy my scruffy old clothing if I tried to sell it? And I can’t put it in the bin, that would be so wasteful.
So I wear them around the house, strictly never being seen by anyone else. Then they go onto the ‘scruffy clothing’ shelf for those days when I’m cleaning the house, gardening or painting a wall. Then, they’ll be cut up into cloths for wiping up spills and polishing shoes. Only then, once all avenues have been exhausted, will I get rid of the resulting pieces.
That’s after years of washing, drying, mending and storing the item. Have I actually used more energy by keeping it than if I’d put it in the textile recycling bin years earlier?
It’s not just jumpers – I’m like this with socks too. When a pair gets a hole in one sock, that one goes into the cleaning cupboard for dusting (really practical to slip it over your hand to wipe the top of cabinets) and the remaining ‘good’ sock goes back into the drawer to be mis-matched with another lonely solo sock.
The trouble is that items wear out and are relegated to the scruffy shelf at a faster rate than I can use up the existing old items in there. So I probably now have more tatty jumpers and torn jeans than my wearable presentable ones.
It’s probably a sign that I’m keeping hold of too much stuff when my ‘digging the garden’ wardrobe is more well-stocked than my real wardrobe, right?
While we don’t want to create waste, we also don’t need our homes to become an alternative to a recycling centre. If we don’t need the item any more, we have to give ourselves the chance to let it go without guilt.
And the best way to do that is by rehoming quality items and responsibly disposing of the rest through waste recycling centres and reuse services.
Almost everything can be recycled when it is correctly sorted and, if you’re going to spend time feeling guilty about creating waste anyway, you might as well use that time to carefully organise the things you’re getting rid of and disposing of them using a suitable system.
Do your research: Find out what can go in your recycling bin. Check the website of your local recycling centre to find out what can be accepted there. Browse the internet to find companies that collect mixed-material packaging.
Even things like spectacles and medicine blister packs can be dropped off at some pharmacies. Batteries and bags can be collected in some supermarkets. And you may find clothing recycling bins in high-street fashion stores.
It’s all about research, research, research…
Knowing what you can get rid of and where you can recycle it will help to ease the decluttering journey when you’re deciding what to keep.
You won’t have to put that broken electrical item back in the cupboard just because you don’t know what to do with it; you can add it to the pile of items to take to the waste recycling centre, confident in the knowledge that it’ll be accepted into the small electricals bin there and recycled accordingly.
If you do your research before you start, it’ll save you the guilt and worry of creating waste when you’re clearing the clutter.